Reviews are all over the place for the 470 vs 5850. Most seem to favour the 5850 for its close performance and lower price (less heat and power too).

[H] in particular seems the strongest about this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kyle Bennett

We see no reason to purchase a GeForce GTX 470. It provides no gameplay advantages compared to the competition, and will actually end up costing you more power and dollars for the exact same performance you can get with the Radeon HD 5850. Factor in the power consumption, and it doesn’t seem worth it. If you have an HD 5850, stick with it, the GTX 470 is not an upgrade.

I was focusing on the 470 and 5850 performance, and I'll probably wait until some reviews based on manufactured cards vs the Vapor-X version of the 5850 which is what I have my sights on.

Yeah, as excited I am by this launch I'll be waiting for revisions. I am giving the new cards some slack in my judgment because they're a completely new architecture and already they've turned out not as bad as everyone thought. If I had to hazard a guess, this batch of releases is a compromise between R&D and marketing and all the real hardware tweaking has yet to be done. But hey, I'm a hapless optimist.